


Civilized

by ivorytower



Category: Warhammer - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Primarchs, gender swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 18:25:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2591648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorytower/pseuds/ivorytower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You brothers - such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilised. He thought I was joking - I was not. - Malcador the Sigillite (Scars by Chris Wraight)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Civilized

  
“ _I told him that he should have made you girls...”_  
   
\--  
   
“I'm out!” Hera slammed her back against the wall. Immediately, Elanor handed her a new bolter, then reloaded the empty one. Her helm crackled and sprang to life. “Aximand? What is it?”  
   
“Loken's squad is under heavy fire,” Horus Aximand said tersely. “He's just a child, he's barely out of scout training.”  
   
“Kid's got guts, let's see if I can save him. Cover fire incoming!” Hera spun out from cover, switched to fully automatic and sprayed across the field, into the bodies of the charging orks. “Waaaugh this, you great green bastards!”  
   
\--  
   
“Magna, you've been at this for hours,” Amon murmured, carrying a cup of cold tea. Sitting on the bench of her work table, the copper-skinned girl didn't even blink. He set the cup down. “You haven't slept in days.”  
   
“You don't understand,” Magna whispered, her eyes glittering in the lamplight, and then looked up at him. Amon's breath caught in his throat: her eyes were not one hue but many, the colours of all of the pieces of broken glass set before her. “The pattern is here. If I can find it, if I can bring it out, I can finally find the answer.”  
   
“The answer to what?”  
   
Magna smiled. “Everything.”  
   
\--  
   
The sound of screaming was loud. The trick was to speak louder. The sound of crackling and burning was louder. The trick was to stay cool under fire.  
   
“If you see the heretic, you should cast him out!” Lorna cried, raising her fist. Her hand was covered in dried blood. Her face, smeared. There would be new tattoos to add, new words to her great work, but for now, blood was her canvass. “Do not tolerate their blasphemous words! God is coming! I have seen it! His light fills my mind, my body, and my soul. I am His will made flesh and He will not be denied!”  
   
The crowd roared their approval. Kor Phaeron smiled indulgently, and Lorna flicked her gaze to him.  
   
Her father had approved of everything she had done. He was so very pleased with her. He would, perhaps, be less pleased to know that his heart would be offered up to the True God before the week was out.  
   
God tolerates no others to be worshipped above Him, after all.  
   
\--  
   
“Father...”  
   
Konor Guilliman coughed, spraying blood on silver plate that was tarnished by the dirt of the roads. She hadn't expected to need to rush home, to speed the way to her father's side to prevent him from dying.  
   
“Callan will pay for this,” she promised. “I swear it to you. It will not be out of revenge. It will be out of justice, for all of the people he will hurt with his treachery. I will keep my heart and mind clear.”  
   
“Rhosewen...” Konor whispered, reaching up to touch her cheek. “A little vengeance is okay, now and then.”  
   
Rhosewen Guilliman, future consul of Macragge, grinned. “Alright then.”  
   
\--  
   
“They're dead!” The cry came from inside the ganger den, and was audible through the cracked open window. She smiled slowly, putting the cigarette to her pale lips and lighting it. She was crouched atop the building of a nearby roof.  
   
“No, only half!” someone else said. “Maybe... maybe she missed us!”  
   
 _No, I didn't._  
   
“Get out! Get out now!” She took in a deep drag, and held it for a moment, as though in anticipation.  
   
Seconds later, the ganger den exploded. She smiled and exhaled, putting that much more polluted smoke into the air. Shrapnel flew in all directions, touching off a half-dozen secondary explosions.  
   
“That's why you should always check for traps,” she said, and finished her cigarette as she watched the buzz of activity. She would enjoy it when they found her calling card.  
   
By then, though, she would be long gone, to haunt Nostramo's dark night elsewhere.  
   
\--  
   
“The fault of kings is that they grow too fat on their thrones.” Her voice was hoarse. She had ridden all morning, fought all afternoon, and now in the bloody light of the setting sun over the plains, she stood before the throne of the last king of Chogoris. “They grow lazy, they grow complacent! They embrace the darkness of the Great Ocean.”  
   
Her warriors roared their disapproval. Like her, they had fought her. Like her, they bore the scars, the torn armour, the splintered weapons. Like her, they were triumphant.  
   
“So I say that there will be no more thrones!” she cried, raising her tulwar high. “No more kings! We shall meet as brotherhoods upon the plains. We will listen to the wisdom of the storm seers! We will live free!”  
   
The warriors raised their weapons, or what was left of them in some cases, screaming her name. White Lightning. White Lightning.  
   
“Never again!” White Lightning screamed, and lunged forward, grabbing the throne and throwing it down, then began to kick it apart. “No thrones!”  
   
“No kings! No thrones!”  
   
White Lightning.  
   
\--  
   
“Executive Amphitrite, there are people here to see you,” said the woman at the door, looking excited and a bit nervous. “They insist. They're people from off **world** , some place they call the Imperium.”

“Of course,” Amphitrite said, brushing invisible dust from the shoulders of her pale fuchsia suit-jacket, and straightening her gold-trimmed cuffs. As the door opened, it admitted a handful of tall men clad in black, adorned with bone-white and skulls.  
   
When they saw her, they frowned faintly with disapproval. “Do we speak to the leader of Chemos?”  
   
“You do,” she replied. “I am Amphitrite, Chief Executive Officer of Chemos. What can you do for me today?”  
   
“Executive,” the first man said, his voice a faint sneer. “We represent the Emperor of Mankind, leader of the greatest Empire in existence. We come to you in the interests of joining the Imperium **peacefully** , but it is you who must consider what you will offer **us**.”  
   
Amphitrite's eyes widened a little, the amethyst in them all but disappearing into the black. She stood. “No, I believe you will find that I will not consider that at all. The people of Chemos have remained entirely independent for centuries, millennia even, from this Imperium. We are completely self-sustaining. We trade between factory centres, creating economic flow. We have art, and culture, and beauty.”  
   
“You are foolish if you think that you can defend yourself from all the ills this galaxy has,” the second man snapped. “You let us walk right in. We could take you hostage right--”  
   
Amphitrite pointed a silver pistol at them, drawing it from her jacket with a single, fluid motion. From behind the men, a dozen security team members burst in with swords and pistols.  
   
She smiled coldly. “I ask you again, **gentlemen** : what can the Imperium do for **us** , since we do not at all need you. I wouldn't take too long to answer, or we will destroy your ship. I have no doubt that it will not take me long how to put it back together after you are dead.”  
   
\--  
   
She circled the lion slowly. It roared, spraying saliva in her direction. She move quickly, and heard rather than saw the grass hissing. _Acidic saliva. Of course._ She lunged forward at the same instant the lion leaped at her. Her sword flashed out, seeking the one path that would allow her victory: by thrusting directly through the lion's mouth and down its throat.  
   
She gritted her teeth against the searing pain as the lion's tooth cut into her arm, and thrust as deeply as she could. The lion thrashed once, twice, and fell still. She tried to tug the sword out, but it was caught fast. She gritted her teeth and tugged harder.  
   
“Leona... let it go,” Luther said, his voice hushed. “Daughter, your arm.”  
   
Leona looked down at the blood welling along it, as though surprised. She let the sword go and pulled back. Almost immediately, she began to scream in agony, falling to her knees as the pain truly hit her. She fought the pain, writhing on the ground.  
   
There was so much pain that she blacked out for a few minutes. When she awoke, Luther had tended to her arm and was holding her in his arms. “You're a damned fool, girl.”  
   
She smiled a little, though her gaze was hazy with pain. “First lion kill goes to me, Father.”  
   
Luther laughed shortly. “It certainly did. You've proven yourself to be a knight.”  
   
“Of course I have,” she replied, her eyes closing again. “I am a champion, and and all will hear me roar.”  
   
“We will always hear the Lioness of Caliban,” Luther promised. “When you're awake, you can also see what you've done to your hair.”  
   
“...what's wrong with my hair?”  
   
\--  
   
“No, that's not how you do it.” The farmers looked up, giving each other uncertain looks. The woman had been with them for a week now. Tall and gaunt, clad in black, she would cut an imposing figure if she was muscular, but instead she was pale, rail-thin, and hopelessly awkward.  
   
“We know how to harvest,” one said. “But thank you, Megaera.”  
   
“But it's wrong, let me show you.” She extended a hand, reaching for the tool the farmer was holding. He handed it to her. “What is this called?”  
   
“It's a scythe,” he said, wondering how she could do well with a tool she couldn't name. A faint smile flickered over her expression.  
   
“Ah, yes,” she replied. “For reaping what was sown.” Turning away from the farmers slightly, she brought the scythe down in an arc.  
   
\--  
   
Many Baalites liked to look down towards the ground. They saw the scorpions and the worms and feared. Sanguinalia looked to the sky. The hell eagle dove at her, screaming its rage, talons out, ready to rake her bloody.  
   
With a beat of her huge, white wings, she pulled clear, her spear coming out to stab it in the side. It shrieked in pain, and Sanguinalia met it with a cry of her own. Shifting her grip, she pulled upwards, digging the furrow deep.  
   
The hell eagle fell, and she followed it, skewering it to the ground.  
   
“Do not...” she said, her chest heaving, sweat rolling between her breasts, “ever... attack my nest again.”  
   
The eagle, being dead, had nothing to say in reply.  
   
\--  
   
“As you can see, by using this angle of attack, the defenses will crumble in two days' time.” She extended a pointer, tapping at several places on the map. “Each marked point is vulnerable to certain stresses. Causing those stresses will bring down the wall.”  
   
“Is it going to work, Velocitas? It's been tried before. The King--”  
   
“It will work,” Velocitas said, smiling coldly, her gun-metal grey eyes sparkling, “because I've planned for every contingency. Siege warfare is never clean, but it can be very, very effective.”  
   
Those crowded around the table murmured in approval.  
   
“The Tyrant of Olympia falls **tonight**.”  
   
\--  
   
“They say she strangled a dragon to death with her bare hands.”  
   
She smiled a little, though her hammering at the metal remained consistent. No reason to correct them: she'd held the dragon under lava. It had been... well, painful. Until it hadn't because her skin had charred off, leaving the structure of her hands exposed.  
   
That her bones had never melted made her very curious to know what they were made of. The first, more pressing curiosities were where she had come from, why she had come to Medusa, and of course, what lay ahead.  
   
The sound of metal hitting metal was always so soothing. Rhythmic, even.  
   
“Be that as it may, I still need work done. Could you get her for me?”  
   
“Do you really want to face the Gorgon?” the first voice muttered. “Stheno? Are you busy?”  
   
“Yes, though you can send them in now,” Stheno replied. “If they think they can stand the forge's heat. Otherwise, I'm too busy to talk.”  
   
\--  
   
“Go! Go!” she cried. “I'll hold it off!”  
   
The polar bear was one of the biggest she'd ever seen, and it was coming in fast. They'd gone out in teams across the killing ice. Now, one of the sleds was destroyed, and several of the dogs were hurt.  
   
 _I will leave no one behind,_ she vowed, hefting her harpoon. _Not one sled dog, not one friend._  
   
“ Svetlana, **run**!” her cousin cried. Piotr sounded as though he was weeping in fear. “Just leave them!”  
   
“No,” Svetlana, Granddaughter of Dorn, said. “I will never run.” She took two steps forward, and hurled with all her might, blue eyes bright as she watched her cast strike home.  
   
\--  
   
“Don't...”  
   
The breathing was coming in ragged pants. Like an animal's, wet and thick. There was blood... there was so much blood on the sands. They'd come alone at first, then in twos and threes. Here and there, their tools were scattered, the needles, the knives.  
   
There was so much blood everywhere.  
   
“It's standard procedure for gladiators,” said one of the handlers. He was lucky: he had only lost one ear and a piece of his cheek. The sound of tearing flesh and crunching cartilage shook him to the core. He was the lucky one. There were arms, full arms, laying in pools of blood while their former owners screamed and screamed.  
   
  
So much blood... too much. It wasn't worth it. None of it was worth it.   
  
__  
Just kill her and be done with it. She is untameable.  
  
   
“If you want me to fight, I will fight,” she said, the words coming out as though biting the air and tearing the words out of it. He shuddered. Gruesome. “If you want me to kill, I will kill. I will kill any one of you. All of you.”  
   
“You need to fight in the arena against those we send against you,” he explained again, patiently. “Which means you need the Nails.”  
   
“No!” she snapped, and the handful of survivors recoiled back. “Give me an axe and a chain and I will kill all of you Highriders... but do not... ever... come at me with your knives.”  
   
“Very well, Furia. We'll--” Blood-encrusted hair fell back from her face, revealing her eyes, wild, terrible, red with fury and hate and death.  
   
“Or I will kill every last one of you.” She bared yellowed, sharp teeth. “I still may. You cannot control fury.”  
   
\--  
   
“ _...at least then you'd have been more civilized.”_  
 


End file.
